Nichols Arboretum Peony Garden | One of the world's premier collections of heirloom peonies.

Peony Garden

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The 2021 bloom season is over.

Nichols Arboretum is open sunrise to sunset daily.

What's in
Bloom

Passion for peonies book cover

Passion for Peonies collects short essays that celebrate the story of the Nichols Arboretum Peony Garden as well as the rich social history of peony gardening that it is an integral part of. Collected and edited by David Michener, curator of Matthaei-Nichols, and Bob Grese, retired director of Matthaei-Nichols. Click here for more info and to purchase the book.

The University of Michigan Nichols Arboretum Peony Garden is one of the world’s premiere collections. The garden holds nearly 800 peonies and over 10,000 flowers at peak bloom.

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Then & Now: We're digging into our past and reflec

Then & Now: We're digging into our past and reflecting on the many changes our properties have gone through.

Ever wonder how a perennial garden comes to be? Originally named the Rose & Perennial Garden, its development started in the 1970s. It was one of the first outdoor gardens developed at Matthaei and continues to be one of our most popular gardens to date.

Invasive plant of the week returns! This week’s

Invasive plant of the week returns! This week’s invasive plant is common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica).

If you’re looking for the poster child of invasive plants, common buckthorn would be at the top of the list. This aggressively spreading woody plant is native to Europe and western Asia. It was introduced to the United States as an ornamental in the early 1800s.

Walk through just about any park or neighborhood in Ann Arbor or southern Michigan (and many other states) and you’ll see thickets of buckthorn taking over landscapes, home gardens, and fence rows. Sometimes it forms an impenetrable wall of vegetation. Unsuspecting homeowners even unwittingly nurture single specimens as if they were worthy horticultural plantings. Of common buckthorn’s landscape-altering qualities, minnesotawildflowers.info writes, “It is discouraging that there is now an entire generation of young adults for whom a relatively open and diverse woodland is unfamiliar.”

A growing and reproducing machine, common buckthorn is, so to speak, a nearly perfect invasive plant. It tolerates a wide variety of environmental conditions, including shade and wet or dry sites. It grows quickly. It forms dense stands that crowd out everything else, including native plants. It produces copious berries that are eaten by birds and other animals that then spread the seed to the four corners. There is even evidence showing that common buckthorn is allelopathic—producing chemicals that inhibit the growth of other plants. It’s a doomsday invasive plant.

Once you see common buckthorn you won’t forget what it looks like. There are plenty of clues. The leaves stay green and persist into late fall and even early winter. In the spring common buckthorn leafs out early. In summer and fall clusters of dark-purple or nearly black berries cover the branches. Twigs may have a thorn at the tip. Inner bark is orange.

Effective control includes removal of fruit-producing plants, mechanical pulling of seedlings, and, often, targeted application of herbicide to the cut surfaces of stumps. These processes will likely need to be repeated multiple times.

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Some web! The entrancing and fleeting perfection o

Some web! The entrancing and fleeting perfection of an orb-weaving spider web, this one discovered by staffer Katie Stannard at Matthaei Botanical Gardens recently. There are about 3,500 species of orb weaver spiders worldwide. They’re typically nocturnal and docile. The most famous orb weaver is Charlotte the spider in Charlotte's Web by E. B. White.

Welcome back students! Next time you're in a UM

Welcome back students!

Next time you're in a UM dining hall, look for fresh produce grown at the Campus Farm by other students.

And while you're learning about campus life and classes, remember to take a break in nature, like Nichols Arboretum near central campus on Washington Heights and Matthaei Botanical Gardens on Dixboro for our display gardens, trails, and all-season conservatory. Worth the trip!

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